GECOM Chair orders halt to H2H Registration

…PPP raises concern over merging unverified data with Register

…calls for immediate Claims and Objections exercise

Chairperson of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), Retired Justice Claudette “Iron lady” Singh, has ordered an end to the ongoing House-to-House Registration exercise, bringing an end to a controversial chapter of GECOM’s recent history.
The decision was taken at a statutory meeting on Tuesday, where she decided that the exercise will be concluded as of August 31, 2019, and that GECOM will afterwards embark on more concrete steps towards the hosting of General and Regional Elections.
It was also decided that the data gathered so far by the House-to-House exercise will be merged with the existing database. Further, a statement from GECOM explained that the Chairperson has decided that the Commission will move to an extensive Claims and Objections, after publishing the Preliminary List of Electors (PLE).
The People’s Progressive Party (PPP)-nominated Commissioners are less than happy, however, about the decision to merge the House-to-House Registration data with the National Register of Registrants (NRR). According to Commissioner Robeson Benn, this was not a product of their proposals.
“The difficulty we have is merging and verification of the data. It was not our proposal. We have said that any merging or verification of the data is wrong, it will take a long time and it will contaminate the NRR. It will result in duplicates. And having appeared as duplicates, each one of those will have to be investigated”.
“The resort to use the House-to-House Registration information is only another ploy to delay the holding of elections as required by the No-Confidence Motion. We are very unhappy about that,” Benn said.

Jamaica trip
Meanwhile, Commissioner Bibi Shadick noted that a team from GECOM— including Deputy Chief Elections Officer Roxanne Myers and the Information Technology Manager— are presently in Jamaica observing the process of cross matching fingerprints.
She explained that after they return, Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield will prepare a plan proposing the timeframe to merge the data with the Register. According to Shadick, this plan will be discussed by the Commission and if necessary, further decisions will be made.
Reports indicate that during the exercise, the only political party that supervised the enumerators was the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU). The PPP was not even invited. The fact that the data was obtained at a time when the PPP played no part in supervising the enumerators was referenced by Opposition-nominated Commissioner Sase Gunraj.
“I maintain that the information contained in the house-to-house process is unverified data and as a consequence should not be used. But it’s left to be seen what the secretariat comes within terms of the use of that data,” Gunraj said.
Monday’s meeting was one of several meetings between the Chairperson and her Commissioners. The previous meetings had ended in no consensus being reached, with the Government Commissioners pushing for House-to-House to be continued and persons questioning the delay for GECOM to come to a decision.
It is understood that over 200,000 persons were registered by GECOM during the house-to-house exercise. However, many of these registrations are believed to be duplications, which is against the law in section 21 of the National Registration Act.

More questions than answers
Meanwhile, the PPP in a statement afterwards noted that the statement issued by GECOM afterwards leaves more questions than answers. For instance, the Party noted that if the data is to be merged, then it cannot be the entire 270,000 persons GECOM claimed it registered, since this would include duplicates. The PPP pointed out that instead of seeking to merge the data, which will take months, Claims and Objections could achieve the same result in a shorter time.
“Secondly, the GECOM press statement said: ‘Based on the ruling of the Chief Justice on 14th August 2019 that House-to-House Registration is not unlawful and is constitutional, the data garnered from that registration exercise must be merged with the existing National Register of Registrants Database.’ This is an attempt to distort the ruling of the High Court. Nowhere in the ruling of the Chief Justice did she direct any merger of data garnered from House-to-House Registration with the NRR”.
“We reiterate the position of the PPP, which is that the planned merger of data from the House-to-House Registration will not improve the quality or ‘credibility’ of the database – rather, it will further contaminate the National Register of Registrants and cause further delays in the holding of elections,” the Party added.
In its statement, the Party went on to urge GECOM to move decisively by immediately launching its Claims and Objections exercise. This, the Party noted, would allow anyone not on the NRR and eligible, to be registered.
The Party added that for weeks now, its General Secretary, Bharrat Jagdeo, has said that House-to-House Registration, in addition to being a waste of taxpayers’ resources, was intended to delay the holding of General and Regional Elections, which should have been held since March 21, 2019.
Further, the Party is of the view that the decision made by GECOM on Tuesday is the only logical decision that could have been made.